South African rhino survives horrific attack by poachers (UPDATED & photo)
Last edited Mon May 25, 2015, 01:23 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: AP
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The rhino's rescuers gave her a name: Hope.
Poachers in South Africa had darted the rhino with a tranquilizer and hacked off her horns while she was sedated, leaving the animal with a horrific wound covering much of her face. A couple of days later, staff on a wildlife reserve found the grievously injured rhino — alive.
Last week, veterinarians operated on the 4-year-old female, a rare survivor of increasing attacks by poachers who killed more than 1,200 rhinos last year in South Africa, home to most of the world's rhinos. They removed maggots and dead tissue, applied dressing and fastened a fiberglass cast with steel screws. The wound measures 50 by 28 centimeters (19.6 by 11 inches), the biggest of 10 similar cases that the team has treated in the last three years.
"If we can save Hope and she can go back and produce more offspring, then in her lifetime she would have contributed to the survival of the species," said Dr. Gerhard Steenkamp, a veterinarian from the University of Pretoria. He is a member of Saving the Survivors, a South African group that treats rhinos with gunshot wounds, facial gouges and other injuries inflicted by poachers.
FULL story at link.
In this photo taken Friday, May 22, 2015 and supplied by Saving the Survivors, a rhino named Hope, stands in her pen in the Eastern Cape province, treated with a dressing where her horns used to be. Poachers had darted the rhino with a tranquilizer and then hacked off its horns while it was sedated, leaving the animal with a horrific wound covering much of its face. (Suzanne Boswell Rudham/Saving the Survivors via AP)
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/01cf56834c834d69b9c30a3b283b485c/south-african-rhino-survives-horrific-attack-poachers
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